Moving right along
Greetings!
It’s been a beautiful week on the farm and it feels like everything is back on track and we’re finally caught up on the laundry list of tasks we’ve had accumulating over the past month. Our crew planted the next succession of summer crops out over the past week, and the fields are beginning to look full and beautiful. We are experiencing a bit of a lull in the harvest as we wait for our first summer crops to bloom, but things are looking good and we’re honestly grateful to have a little bit of downtime. When the temperatures are mild and the weather is nice, it is so much easier to get things done. Our crew has been incredible this year as we’ve traversed some seriously busy weeks and occasionally terrible weather. We’re so lucky to have them!
Dave, staking dahlias
One of the big projects we were able to begin tackling this week was maintenance in our overwintered dahlia field. If you’ve been a newsletter reader for a while now, you might recall that for the past two years we’ve overwintered our dahlias under a thick layer of straw and plastic. The overwintered plants have already grown to be knee high, and they are putting on buds already!
We removed the drip irrigation before using a hedge trimmer to cut down all of the plants in the fall, so a top priority this week was getting irrigation down before the plants got to big to squeeze it in, and staking the plants so they won’t fall over. We also needed to replace plants in spots where they didn’t survive the winter, most likely because it got too wet in some areas of the field. Since we started overwintering the plants, we’ve been sure to dig and divide tubers of our favorite varieties to ensure that we have a backup supply for anything that doesn’t make it through the winter.
Once we replaced all of the tubers, laid down irrigation, and put all of the stakes in the ground, we used straw to mulch all of the beds. Since we had such a thick layer of straw on the beds over the winter, we were able to just reuse the straw and quickly move it back into the beds and along the paths. Now we just need to use twine keep all of the plants upright!
An overwintered dahlia plant; they’re growing vigorously.
This week we’re appreciating this lovely “Ivory Princess” calendula that just began to bloom.
Lunar Blue sweet peas are another favorite of mine these days. Sweet peas are so finicky to grow, and we question whether it is worth it, but the incredible fragrance and color of these blooms is unreal in person.
The back corner of the farm, featuring bachelors buttons and wheat, dancing in the wind in the early morning.
We’re back at the JFX market on Sunday from 7:00-12:00.
This week’s market stand will feature bouquets, campanula bunches, delphinium bunches, foxglove bunches, feverfew bunches, larksput bunches, peony bunches, snapdragon bunches, sweet pea bunches, elderflowers, edible flowers, spring mix, and hakurei turnips.
Wishing you well,
Amelia and the rest of the Two Boots crew
Harry, in a rare (for him) moment of calm.